


No Game, No Life

by orphan_account



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fili conspires to be a matchmaker, Fluff, Gamer AU - Freeform, M/M, Multi, Programmer!Bilbo, Videogames, general silliness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 08:38:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3971305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“we both play this stupid game online and you keep beating me every single goddamn time so i called you out and you are pretty cute but can you not” AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Game, No Life

**Author's Note:**

> Lots of people wanted this one, and I wanted to write it. Sooooo, here it is~

Kíli can safely say that his life has gone to hell. In fact, he can do better than most and pinpoint precisely when that happened-it’s recorded with irritating permanence in his log, and the numbers have glared at him tauntingly long enough that they’re seared into his brain by now. Thursday, May 18th, 2013, at exactly 11:43 A.M.

Until then, he’d had a pretty good thing going. Arda was a MMORPG, though it remained relatively unknown (Kíli was sure that it’d pick up soon, and explosively; it’d already started, too, badly enough that he and the ‘Company of Thorin Oakenshield’, basically his family and friends that played with his Uncle, had decided to create a private server for themselves-it helped that Uncle had started dating an expert programmer, not that Fíli was too shabby, himself).

So yeah, things had been fairly damn good. Good players-the best in fact, were allowed onto their server; Bilbo and Fíli were in charge of filtering the veritable flood of applicants (yes, they had applicants, and that thrilled Kíli more than anything) for the best of the best. The cream of the crop. The cherries on top of the ice scream sundae.

Asshole cherries, if he’s to be quite honest. Like Thranduil. And this absolute fucking troll who goes by ‘Smaug’ and exploited a glitch in the game to make his avatar an enormous dragon. And Azog, ‘the Defiler’, who Uncle actually knows in person. The rivalry between Thorin, Azog, Smaug, and Thranduil is absolutely legendary, if Kíli’s completely honest, though that only comes into his own story of how everything spiraled out of control in that he gained a rival of his own.

Tauriel, Captain of the Guard.

Gamer girls weren’t exactly hard to come by on Arda, and it was a lot better the WoW or Starcraft like that, though their server had fewer females. Mostly, as Arwen had said, because the ladies didn’t have the time to waste their lives away in front of a computer screen. She wasn’t on much, but when she was, she played with her boyfriend of several years, Aragorn. She was one of five females to play-Galadriel, Eówyn, Lobelia, and, to Fíli and Kíli’s eternal horror, their mother Dís.

Well, until Tauriel was added to their ranks.

It wasn’t that she was bad-if she was a bad player she wouldn’t have been on the server in the first place. It wasn’t even that she was with Thranduil, and all others with Elven avatars-that was forgivable too, for Kíli, at least, though his uncle viewed it as the highest offense. It was that she was good-ridiculously so. Incredibly so.

Good enough to beat Kíli in the 1v1 games they played with a fervent urgency.

That was where the sting lay. Kíli had always been the best 1v1 player on the server, before her-and the only archer. There was something special about that role, seeing as archery was ridiculously difficult to master in-game (and even harder in real life, though none but Fíli knew of his botched attempts to try it), something meant for only him. And then she’d come and taken that away, by beating him in less than ten minutes of gameplay.

It was insane. Kíli’d never had his pride wounded like that before, so of course he’d demanded a rematch. It was a fluke, right? It had to be a fluke. But, apparently it wasn’t, and that seriously sucked ass.

And that had been the beginning of an epic rivalry between them. It wasn’t even fair, not by any means; apparently Tauriel had been gaming since she was a kid, and she’d been able to beat Legolas (Thranduil’s son, Elven Prince in game) even when he’d been playing years longer than she had. Kíli decidedly did not want to face her in any other games, especially not League. She’d be a beast a League, he was pretty sure, and he wasn’t half as good there as he was in Arda.

Yeah, no thanks. He’d rather not go to the restaurant and order a steaming pile of humiliation.

And yet here he was, stewing in said pile of humiliation after his twenty-ninth consecutive loss, with Tauriel whooping in victory, her voice made tinny by the Skype call. Sometimes, he found himself wondering what she’d sound like in real life, without crumpled static and bitten off curses from the other players to mar her voice.

It wasn’t as if she wasn’t real-Fíli had met her when he went to the Con with Legolas, all three of them resplendent in their cosplays of their characters. If Kíli thought that Tauriel was surprisingly-ridiculously, in fact-attractive, he kept that little tidbit to himself. It wasn’t enough that she was kicking his ass weekly, at the very least, but she had to be hot and smart while doing it, too?

It was _so_ not fair.

“Alright, alright,” he groaned, rubbing the grit out of his burning eyes. He’d been playing for almost 14 hours now, and he couldn’t decide if he was too hungry to pee, too tired to eat, or wanted to pee too badly to do anything else.

“Finished already, kiddo?” she asked, even though the game’s background music cut off-she was clearly done, and thank whatever gods there were, because Kíli would not have been able to last another hour-long duel, let alone a five minute conversation in game.

“I haven’t eaten in fourteen hours, soon enough, my stomach is going to digest itself in protest,” he grumbled, his back arching with a satisfying pop.

“Weak,” she snickered, even as the telltale crinkling of a bag of chips belied her comment.

“Says the one who’s allowed to hoard snacks in their room like some sort of junk food squirrel,” he shot back, his stomach growling at him to get a move on.

“I still don’t understand why you can’t.”

“I told you! Mum and Fíli get so anal about crumbs and shit-Fee’s scared to death of roaches, though, so that might be why. And I guess Mum doesn’t want to have to call the exterminator,” he sighed, pouting into the grainy webcam.

“Still living with your Mum, awh, poor baby,” she teased, popping a chip into her mouth. Kíli was sure that she was only chewing irritatingly loudly to get on his nerves, but having grown up around Dwalin and Bombur, it was the sort of thing he’d become immune to.

“Not like you’re still freeloading with Thranduil and Legolas,” he huffed, drawing his knees to his chest. His bladder and stomach were now doing something quite interesting in an attempt to outshout each other, yet he ignored the both of them.

“Hey, I’m adopted. I was picked,” she said smugly through a mouthful of chips.

“Yeah, well I was planned,” he scoffed, crossing his arms, trying to decide if he should part with her by using his near-exploding bladder, ravenous stomach, or just plain fall asleep on his laptop again. It’s a pointless process, really, he sighed to himself; all he’s doing is delaying the inevitable. Again.

“Sure, that’s what they all tell their children,” she replied, though there was no real heat to her words. Kíli feels something warm blossom in his chest at the goofy, exhausted smile that’s worked its way onto her face.

“Hey,” he started, trepidation fluttering through him. He’s been wanting to ask this for ages, ever since the Con and her ridiculous selfies on his brother’s phone, he just hasn’t really found the time. Or the courage, if he’s going to be quite honest with himself. “You know how we don’t actually live that far from each other?”

“What about it?” she asked, raising an eyebrow, leaning in close so he can just make out the curve of her smile before it vanishes under her scrutiny.

“Well you’ve already met Fee, and Uncle, and well. Everyone but me,” he paused, fiddling with the controller lying idle on his bed.

“And your point is, o rival?”

“Fight me irl, loser,” he blurted out, his mouth running ten thousand miles ahead of his mouth in the most embarrassing way possible, as usual.

“Bring it. Bilbo’s bakery at ten tomorrow, noob.”


End file.
